“Which one?  Yes, he was in the Navy.  You’ll see it on the opposite page.  He deserted, poor boy, in Cork Harbour, and shipped on board a tramp steamer as donkey-man.  She loaded at Fowey and was wrecked on the voyage back.  William Pellow he was called:  his mother lives but ten miles up the coast:  she never heard of it until six weeks after.”

“But we—­I, I mean—­knew him.  He was one of the sailor boys on Joby’s van.  You remember their helping us with the luggage at Indian Queens’? He showed me his tattoo marks that day.”

And again he saw his childhood as it were set about with an enchanted hedge, across which many voices would have called to him, and some from near, but all had hung muted and arrested.

The inquest on the two drowned sailors was held next day at the Fifteen Balls, down in Innis village.  Later in the afternoon, the four survivors walked up to the church, headed by the Captain.

“We’ve been hearing,” said the Captain, “of your difficulties, sir:  likewise your kindness to other poor seafaring chaps.  We’d have liked to make ye a small offering for your church, but sixteen shillings is all we can raise between us.  So we come to say that if you can put us on to a job, why we’re staying over the funeral, and a day’s work or more after that won’t hurt us one way or another.”

Mr. Raymond led them to the chancel and pointed out a new beam, on which he and Jacky Pascoe had been working a week past, and over which they had been cudgelling their brains how to get it lifted and fixed in place.

“I can send to one of the miners and borrow a couple of ladders.”

“Ladders?  Lord love ye, sir, and begging your pardon, we don’t want ladders.  With a sling, Bill, hey?—­and a couple of tackles.  You leave it to we, sir.”

He went off to turn over the gear salved from his vessel, and early next forenoon had the apparatus rigged up and ready.  He was obliged to leave it at this point, having been summoned across to Falmouth to report to his agents.  His last words, before starting were addressed to his crew.  “I reckon you can fix it now, boys.  There’s only one thing more, and don’t you forget it:  Hats off; and any man that wants to spit must go outside.”

That afternoon Taffy learnt for the first time what could be done with a few ropes and pulleys.  The seamen seemed to spin ropes out of themselves like spiders.  By three o’clock the beam was hoisted and fixed; and they broke off their work to attend their shipmates’ funeral.  After the funeral they fell to again, though more silently, and before nightfall the beam shone with a new coat of varnish.

They left early next morning, after a good deal of handshaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads.  Away to the left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue-grey of the towans.  He watched it as it came slowly towards him, and his heart leapt—­yet not quite as he had expected it to leap.